Was Oppie inspo for a ‘Star Wars’ character?

Just in time for the special occasion, our collections manager came across this eyebrow-raising 2017 article from starwars.com, “Destroyer of Worlds: How Lucasfilm’s Storytellers Found Inspiration for Rogue One.”

You know where this is going, right?

In the article, Pablo Hidalgo of the Lucasfilm Story Group discusses how the team’s take on J. Robert Oppenheimer inspired the character Galen Erso, a scientist who creates the Death Star, the film series’ “ultimate superweapon.” In fact, the first story treatment for “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” was titled “Destroyer of Worlds,” a reference from the Hindu text Bhagavad Gita that Oppenheimer used to poetically mark his role in creating the atomic bomb.

What do you think, film fans? Is Galen Erso a solid stand-in for Oppie? Or does he miss the mark?

Oppenheimer’s own copy of the Bhagavad Gita will be on view at the Bradbury Science Museum later this summer as part of an Oppenheimer-focused installation, created in collaboration with the National Security Research Center.

Read last year’s May the Fourth article about the Los Alamos link to lightsabers.